What's GNU?

Welcome to the inaugural edition of What's GNU?, a semi-regular column on the GNU project. The “semi” in semi-regular means that we expect this column to appear in every issue of Linux Journal, but it may not happen occasionally.

How You Can Contribute

I am asking computer manufacturers for donations of machines
and money. I'm asking individuals for donations of programs and
work.

One consequence you can expect if you donate machines is that
GNU will run on them at an early date. The machines should be
complete, ready to use systems, approved for use in a residential
area, and not in need of sophisticated cooling or power.

I have found very many programmers eager to contribute
part-time work for GNU. For most projects, such part-time
distributed work would be very hard to coordinate; the
independently-written parts would not work together. But for the
particular task of replacing Unix, this problem is absent. A
complete Unix system contains hundreds of utility programs, each of
which is documented separately. Most interface specifications are
fixed by Unix compatibility. If each contributor can write a
compatible replacement for a single Unix utility, and make it work
properly in place of the original on a Unix system, th these
utilities will work right when put together. Even allowing for
Murphy to create a few unexpected problems, assembling these
components will be a feasible task. (The kernel will require closer
communication and will be worked on by a small, tight
group.)

If I get donations of money, I may be able to hire a few
people full or part time. The salary won't be high by programmers'
standards, but I'm looking for people for whom building community
spirit is as important as making money. I view this as a way of
enabling dedicated people to devote their full energies to working
on GNU by sparing them the need to make a living in another
way.

Why All Computer Users Will Benefit

Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good
system software free, just like air.

This means much more than just saving everyone the price of a
Unix license. It means that much wasteful duplication of system
programming effort will be avoided. This effort can go instead into
advancing the state of the art.

Complete system sources will be available to everyone. As a
result, a user who needs changes in the system will always be free
to make them himself, or hire any available programmer or company
to make them for him. Users will no longer be at the mercy of one
programmer or company which owns the sources and is in sole
position to make changes.

Schools will be able to provide a much more educational
environment by encouraging all students to study and improve the
system code. Harvard's computer lab used to have the policy that no
program could be installed on the system if its sources were not on
public display, and upheld it by actually refusing to install
certain programs. I was very much inspired by this.

Finally, the overhead of considering who owns the system
software and what one is or is not entitled to do with it will be
lifted.

Arrangements to make people pay for using a program,
including licensing of copies, always incur a tremendous cost to
society through the cumbersome mechanisms necessary to figure out
how much (that is, which programs) a person must pay for. And only
a police state can force everyone to obey them. Consider a space
station where air must be manufactured at great cost: charging each
breather per liter of air may be fair, but wearing the metered gas
mask all day and all night is intolerable even if everyone can
afford to pay the air bill. And the TV cameras everywhere to see if
you ever take the mask off are outrageous. It's better to support
the air plant with a head tax and chuck the masks.

Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a
programmer as breathing, and as productive. It ought to be as
free.

Some Easily Rebutted Objections to GNU's
Goals

“Nobody will use it if it is free, because that means they
can't rely on any support.”

“You have to charge for the program to pay for providing the
support.”

If people would rather pay for GNU plus service than get GNU
free without service, a company to provide just service to people
who have obtained GNU free ought to be profitable.

We must distinguish between support in the form of real
programming work and mere handholding. The former is something one
cannot rely on from a software vendor. If your problem is not
shared by enough people, the vendor will tell you to get
lost.

If your business needs to be able to rely on support, the
only way is to have all the necessary sources and tools. Then you
can hire any available person to fix your problem; you are not at
the mercy of any individual. With Unix, the price of sources puts
this out of consideration for most businesses. With GNU this will
be easy. It is still possible for there to be no available
competent person, but this problem cannot be blamed on distribution
arrangements. GNU does not eliminate all the world's problems, only
some of them.

Meanwhile, the users who know nothing about computers need
handholding: doing things for them which they could easily do
themselves but don't know how.

Such services could be provided by companies that sell just
hand-holding and repair service. If it is true that users would
rather spend money and get a product with service, they will also
be willing to buy the service having got the product free. The
service companies will compete in quality and price; users will not
be tied to any particular one. Meanwhile, those of us who don't
need the service should be able to use the program without paying
for the service.

“You cannot reach many people without advertising, and you
must charge for the program to support that.”

“It's no use advertising a program people can get
free.”

There are various forms of free or very cheap publicity that
can be used to inform numbers of computer users about something
like GNU. But it may be true that one can reach more microcomputer
users with advertising. If this is really so, a business which
advertises the service of copying and mailing GNU for a fee ought
to be successful enough to pay for its advertising and more. This
way, only the users who benefit from the advertising pay for
it.

On the other hand, if many people get GNU from their friends,
and such companies don't succeed, this will show that advertising
was not really necessary to spread GNU. Why is it that free market
advocates don't want to let the free market decide this?

“My company needs a proprietary operating system to get a
competitive edge.”

GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of
competition. You will not be able to get an edge in this area, but
neither will your competitors be able to get an edge over you. You
and they will compete in other areas, while benefiting mutually in
this one. If your business is selling an operating system, you will
not like GNU, but that's tough on you. If your business is
something else, GNU can save you from being pushed into the
expensive business of selling operating systems.

I would like to see GNU development supported by gifts from
many manufacturers and users, reducing the cost to each.

“Don't programmers deserve a reward for their
creativity?”

If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution.
Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as
society is free to use the results. If programmers deserve to be
rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they
deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these
programs.

“Shouldn't a programmer be able to ask for a reward for his
creativity?”

There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, or seeking
to maximize one's income, as long as one does not use means that
are destructive. But the means customary in the field of software
today are based on destruction.

Extracting money from users of a program by restricting their
use of it is destructive because the restrictions reduce the amount
and the ways that the program can be used. This reduces the amount
of wealth that humanity derives from the program. When there is a
deliberate choice to restrict, the harmful consequences are
deliberate destruction.

The reason a good citizen does not use such destructive means
to become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all
become poorer from the mutual destructiveness. This is Kantian
ethics; or, the Golden Rule. Since I do not like the consequences
that result if everyone hoards information, I am required to
consider it wrong for one to do so. Specifically, the desire to be
rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world
in general of all or part of that creativity.

“Won't programmers starve?”

I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most
of us cannot manage to get any money for standing on the street and
making faces. But we are not, as a result, condemned to spend our
lives standing on the street making faces, and starving. We do
something else.

But that is the wrong answer because it accepts the
questioner's implicit assumption: that without ownership of
software, programmers cannot possibly be paid a cent. Supposedly it
is all or nothing.

The real reason programmers will not starve is that it will
still be possible for them to get paid for programming; just not
paid as much as now.

Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in
software. It is the most common basis because it brings in the most
money. If it were prohibited, or rejected by the customer, software
business would move to other bases of organization which are now
used less often. There are always numerous ways to organize any
kind of business.

Probably programming will not be as lucrative on the new
basis as it is now. But that is not an argument against the change.
It is not considered an injustice that sales clerks make the
salaries that they now do. If programmers made the same, that would
not be an injustice either. (In practice they would still make
considerably more than that.)

“Don't people have a right to control how their creativity is
used?”

“Control over the use of one's ideas” really constitutes
control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make
their lives more difficult.

People who have studied the issue of intellectual property
rights carefully (such as lawyers) say that there is no intrinsic
right to intellectual property. The kinds of supposed intellectual
property rights that the government recognizes were created by
specific acts of legislation for specific purposes.

For example, the patent system was established to encourage
inventors to disclose the details of their inventions. Its purpose
was to help society rather than to help inventors. At the time, the
life span of 17 years for a patent was short compared with the rate
of advance of the state of the art. Since patents are an issue only
among manufacturers, for whom the cost and effort of a license
agreement are small compared with setting up production, the
patents often do not do much harm. They do not obstruct most
individuals who use patented products.

The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when
authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of
non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many
authors' works have survived even in part. The copyright system was
created expressly for the purpose of encouraging authorship. In the
domain for which it was invented—books, which could be copied
economically only on a printing press—it did little harm, and did
not obstruct most of the individuals who read the books.

All intellectual property rights are just licenses granted by
society because it was thought, rightly or wrongly, that society as
a whole would benefit by granting them. But in any particular
situation, we have to ask: are we really better off granting such
license? What kind of act are we licensing a person to do?

The case of programs today is very different from that of
books a hundred years ago. The fact that the easiest way to copy a
program is from one neighbor to another, the fact that a program
has both source code and object code which are distinct, and the
fact that a program is used rather than read and enjoyed, combine
to create a situation in which a person who enforces a copyright is
harming society as a whole both materially and spiritually; in
which a person should not do so regardless of whether the law
enables him to.

“Competition makes things get done better.”

The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the
winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really
works this way, it des a good job; but its defenders are wrong in
assuming it always works this way. If the runners forget why the
reward is offed and become intent on winning, no matter how, they
may find other strategies—such as, attacking other runners. If the
runners get into a fist fight, they will all finish late.

Proprietary and secret software is the moral equivalent of
runners in a fist fight. Sad to say, the only referee we've got
does not seem to object to fights; he just regulates them (“For
every ten yards you run, you are allowed one kick.”). He really
ought to break them up, and penalize runners for even trying to
fight.

“Won't everyone stop programming without a monetary
incentive?”

Actually, many people will program with absolutely no
monetary incentive. Programming has an irresistible fascination for
some people, usually the people who are best at it. There is no
shortage of professional musicians who keep at it even though they
have no hope of making a living that way.

But really this question, though commonly asked, is not
appropriate to the situation. Pay for programmers will not
disappear, only become less. So the right question is, will anyone
program with a reduced monetary incentive? My experience shows that
they will.

For more than ten years, many of the world's best programmers
worked at the Artificial Intelligence Lab for far less money than
they could have had anywhere else. They got many kinds of
non-monetary rewards: fame and appreciation, for example. And
creativity is also fun, a reward in itself.

Then most of them left when offered a chance to do the same
interesting work for a lot of money.

What the facts show is that people will program for reasons
other than riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as
well, they will come to expect and demand it. Low-paying
organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but
they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are
banned.

“We need the programmers desperately. If they demand that we
stop helping our neighbors, we have to obey.”

You're never so desperate that you have to obey this sort of
demand.

Remember: millions for defense, but not a cent for
tribute!

“Programmers need to make a living somehow.”

In the short run, this is true. However, there are plenty of
ways that programmers could make a living without selling the right
to use a program. This way is customary now because it brings
programmers and businessmen the most money, not because it is the
only way to make a living. It is easy to find other ways if you
want to find them. Here are a number of examples.

A manufacturer introducing a new computer will pay for the
porting of operating systems onto the new hardware.

The sale of teaching, hand-holding and maintenance services
could also employ programmers.

People with new ideas could distribute programs as freeware,
asking for donations from satisfied users, or selling hand-holding
services. I have met people who are already working this way
successfully.

Users with related needs can form users' groups, and pay
dues. A group would contract with programming companies to write
programs that the group's members would like to use.

All sorts of development can be funded with a Software
Tax:

Suppose everyone who buys a computer has to pay x percent of
the price as a software tax. The government gives this to an agency
like the NSF to spend on software development.

But if the computer buyer makes a donation to software
development himself, he can take a credit against the tax. He can
donate to the project of his own choosing—often, chosen because he
hopes to use the results when it is done. He can take a credit for
any amount of donation up to the total tax he had to pay.

The total tax rate could be decided by a vote of the payers
of the tax, weighted according to the amount they will be taxed
on.

The consequences:

the computer-using community supports software
development.

this community decides what level of support is
needed.

users who care which projects their share is spent
on can choose this for themselves.

Endnotes:

The author would like to thank Len Tower of the GNU project
for his comments on this column.

Questions and/or comments about this column can be addressed
to the author via postal mail C/O Linux Journal, or via email to
arnold@gnu.ai.mit.edu
.

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